throw away

All posts tagged throw away

Walking down the street an old lady sees a thread of string on the ground, bows down, picks it up and puts it in his pocket taking it away.
Scene of the past, times when a simple string even could be useful, to tie an old cardboard suitcase, for example.
Today, those who need a piece of string buy an entire roll then leaving it who knows where, while the cardboard suitcases exist anymore, we buy a Samsonite trolley or the last publicized on TV, even if for a single trip.

Adaptation? Consumerism? Progress?

It possibly has been the new euro currency making worse the things and then the international crisis, but if we go back in time, the situation about economic difficulty begins with the massive advertising (TV?) and worsens with the loss of some value which over the years hit our society.
For values I also mean also the one about the little things, like the piece of string collected from the woman.
Although my relatives criticisms, I do not throw things away so easily, keep them and gather some good object if abandoned, even if I find a simple nail or an used flowerpot in the street.
My old grandmother said: “chi trova astipa” that in Neapolitan means “who finds must store” and we were a family that couldn’t be defined poor or needy. It was the life style to be different and beyond the value given to any goods, the shame, if presents, was not for those having worn clothes or no car.
Well…. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.. .. somebody could say!
Time ago on a sidewalk, next to garbage cans, I saw a large mirror thrown away because of no use evidently. It was a beautiful mirror in a eight-shaped figure and I don’t deny the instinctive urge to take it before some urchin broke it or the garbage collector took it away, but the shame was over, together the impossibility to carry such a burden alone. I only can imagine what the old woman could have said or any other person just living forty years ago, when things were not thrown away so easily after the use, especially if still good and usable, and there was a sort of family recycle. I think that if such a people could be here today, he/she will have the opportunity to live on a private income coming by all the things thrown away.
And thinking of…………. the one that is asking for a loan just to have a dishwasher at any cost or a newer plasma screen to show at the friends.